Kristin Colloton (from left), John Cyrier and LaTonya Jackson get together at Luminaria 2013 on March 9.

Kristin Colloton (from left), John Cyrier and LaTonya Jackson get together at Luminaria 2013 on March 9.

Photo: J. Michael Short / For The San Antonio Express-News

Social Studies: The luminaries of Luminaria

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Some people complain that Luminaria, which basked HemisFair Park and environs in cosmic lights on March 9, has become too crowded and needs to continue spreading.

“We parked in Corpus Christi,” said artist Gary Sweeney, who with wife Janet was checking out a display of lamps on the front porch of a house in HemisFair Park. Artists Kim Bishop and Judith Cottrell were responsible for that seemingly easy installation, with lamps donated by friends. It in fact suggested stories of domestic life, from reading lamp to lava lamp to pushed-over floor lamp.

Whatever Luminaria's footprint, I was amazed that 300,000 or so souls would seek out sensory overload in HemisFair Park and environs. Who says S.A. is lame?

Twisted laser lights splashed on the Hilton Palacio del Rio, and polka dots were woven into kaleidoscopes on The Magik Theatre. A cellist and violinist (“Dixon's Violin presented by NuStar Energy”) played New Age strains as pastels danced across them and on the wall behind. By the children's playground, itself a mini-mob scene, a guy in a hoodie walked through pulsing red and yellow flowers projected from the sidewalk; two women walking a dog were splashed with flashing lights as techno music pumped.

It was 10:30 p.m. and people were still arriving, touching the flying lights with their hands.

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“It's great because no two people have the same experience,” said Lisa Huggins of Austin, chumming around with Rick Maxey of Canyon Lake. They had just finished playing with Seme Jatib's interactive light display across sheets of water, drawing its light forms on a tablet.

San Antonio Museum of Art's David Rubin and Richard Arredondo led me to Chris Sauter's shrine to St. Apophenia on a Convention Center wall. Using classroom overhead projectors of old, spread around on the grass, he projected a fractured collage of the patron saint of “patternmakers, the mentally ill and artists.”

Just as no two people have the same Luminaria experience, they also won't repeat the same experience from year to year. At Mayor Julián Castro's pre-Luminaria reception for sponsors and organizers, I learned the steering committee — artists who select entries in six art disciplines, from visual to literary arts — changes annually.

“It's scary and exciting,” said The Magik Theatre Executive Director Richard Rosen beforehand. Rosen served as Luminaria co-director with Mellissa Marlowe and Kathy Armstrong. “I feel like this before opening a show. You've done all you can and it's up to the artists.”